Tennis gets plenty of focus in the
Cayman Islands this week as the annual Legends tournament approaches at the
Ritz-Carlton this weekend. Little players also deserve highlighting because
five Cayman juniors were at the
Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy in
Bradenton, Florida for a week’s intensive training camp with the Ritz-Carlton’s
coach Thomas Neuert.
Team Cayman consists of Alex
Leonard, 16, William Hayward, 14, Thomas Wolfe, 14, Josh Bolland, 12, and
Nicholas Polloni, 10. Hayward and Polloni were there as prize winners for
finishing first in their age group in the PWC Cayman Islands Junior Tennis Circuit
last season.
On Friday Neuert said: “The first four days were absolutely amazing
for Cayman’s future tennis stars. Just entering the property of the world’s
largest sports training facility gives you goose bumps. Seeing one tennis court
after the next – 56 in total – and watching top pros as well as hundreds of
juniors from around the world train next to each other and play for hours at a
time, is incredible and very motivating for our team.
“Besides the daily six hour tennis
training schedule plus an hour of conditioning, we had the chance to train
privately with the man himself, Nick Bollettieri, on Tuesday and Wednesday at
6am. A bit early, but that’s how things go at Bollettieri’s Tennis Academy. We
were also lucky to have Brad Gilbert, a former world top five player and former
coach of Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick, train with us for the first few days.
All of our team’s players are having lots of fun and have been working
extremely hard and realise that playing at Bollettieri’s is an experience of a
lifetime.”
Their rigorous daily schedule
started at 6am for an hour training with Bollettieri. Breakfast and rest is
then followed with an hour’s fitness training before a long session of tennis
training. After an hour for lunch there is more tennis training until 4.30pm.
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